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My name is Mark Lewis. I own a few popular royalty free content websites. I have been helping musicians distribute their music for over 17 years now and wanted to use this forum to share thoughts and experiences and hopefully spark some discussion in regards to the distribution of royalty free music and royalty free content in general.
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Royalty Free Action Music is a style of music that you can purchase a royalty free license for at an affordable price and use in as many projects as you want with the lifetime royalty free license.
You can find thousands of royalty free action music tracks available here at musicloops.com
The royalty free action music tracks at musicloops.com are easy to audition and you can also download temp previews to try in your timeline or project before your purchase to make sure the music works properly with your scene.
If you need lots of royalty free action music you can check out action music collections on Partners In Rhyme.com hereRoyalty Free Action Music Collections

You can also check out free royalty free music section of music if you do not have a budget for your projectFree Royalty Free Music

Four New Free Royalty Music TracksClick on the link below to download your 4 free royalty free music clipsFour Free Music Clips

These tracks are free for you to use in your commercial projects just as if you had purchased a license from us. Just our way of saying thanks for being a musicloops.com customer.

Introduction to New Musicloops.com ComposersAt partnersinrhyme.com and musicloops.com we are constantly receiving submissions from composers who want to be part of our library. Very few of them are good enough to make the grade as we have very high standards for whom we accept into our family of composers. Below are some quick introductions to the four composers who have joined us in the last month.

Piotr PacynaPitor has a wide variety styles but all of his tracks have great production value in common.

Krzysztof HornKrzysztof is an amazing electronic composer and creates lots of lush and complex ambient textures with world flavors perfect for nature documentaries or sci fi scenes.
Take a listen to Frozen Planet with it’s layers of ethnic strings and an intermittent breakbeat
Or the tibetan vibe of the ambient track called Yin YangAnd the super cool, chill house track entitled Slow Down.

It is easy to add drama and tension to a scene in your video or film project with the right type of music.

Many times the right piece of music can easily add the feeling you need for a scene and if the music is professionally composed and recorded it will raise the apparent professionalism of your project as well.
Royalty Free Dramatic Music is one of our most popular genres because of of the proliferation of network tv crime shows like CSI, Criminal Minds, Bones and many others.

On PartnersInRhyme.com and Musicloops.com It is easy to license high quality dramatic music for royalty free use without the worry of paying ASCAP or BMI fees and without having to pay extra each time you use the music for different project. Our lifetime license is the most generous in the business, guaranteed.
Our music is also completely Youtube-Safe, you will never see the dreaded third party copyright claim that Youtube places on your video when music that is registered with their YoutubeContentID system is used in a video. That is because we have very strict rules in place before we accept any composer in our library and their catalog has to be absolutely Youtube-Safe.

You can also license individual royalty free dramatic music tracks on our Musicloops.com website in the Drama / Tension genre of the site.
Try listing the genre by most popular to see what other people have licensed in the past. You can also do searches within the genre for specific terms by clicking on the “search within genre” button and entering the keywords you are looking for.
More Dramatic Background Music.

Last year I bought a new guitar and set a challenge for myself. I wanted to really learn what the guitar, and I, had to offer at that point in time so I set out on a mission to write, record and mix 30 guitar riffs in 30 days. I posted each riff on my facebook page everyday when I was done with each mix so that my friends could comment and encourage me, and also so that I wouldn’t miss a day.
While writing the riffs I tried to get in as many styles as possible with lots of nods to my favorite guitarists of the 70′s like Jeff Beck, Django Reinhardt (not from the 70′s but he was awesome), Jimi ‘friggin’ Page, Jimi Hendrix, Ronnie Montrose, Ted Nugent, Robin Trower, Paco De Lucia and Al DiMeola.
It was an incredible learning experience for me and lots of fun. The thing I really got sorted were my mixing chops with multiple guitar melodies, solos and chunky rhythm.
In the end I only got up to 25 fully mixed tracks in 26 days then my health gave out. I was sitting in a strange position while recording and playing and I twisted my hip and could hardly walk for the next three weeks.
I am posting some of the best takes here if you are interested in hearing them. I also want to show that I am not just a business owner / web developer, I have always been a musician first and that is why our company cares so much about our composers. We know what it is like to try and eke out a living doing the thing you love to do.

Anyway, enjoy, or complain, or cover your ears but here’s what I love to do more than anything in the world, play guitar.

PS- The pic in the player is me from the old Hollywood days and is not an accurate representation of how I look now.

This article is for royalty free music composers specifically but is good advice for anybody in business.

Composers who are distributing their royalty free music catalog via online websites like ours need to take into consideration the frailty of the human condition and the fact that anything can happen to you and it could happen to you today. I actually had a good friend of mine get killed when he got hit by a bus, he stepped off the curb at the wrong time and bang, that was it. ‘Getting hit by a bus’ is a such an overused cliche but it really makes you think about life when it actually happens.

The issue with composers of royalty free music catalogs is basically…Does your wife/husband know your Paypal password?
Does your wife/husband know which websites you are distributing your music through?
Does your wife/husband even know that you are making money online with your music?

The Partners In Rhyme Family of Composers
We have been distributing music online for 17 years. Some of our composers have been with us for over 15 years. That is why we always refer to our roster of composers as the ‘Partners In Rhyme family of composers’ and that is why we are so careful about who we let into our family of composers.
In that amount of time we have seen many of our composers have major ups and downs, get married and divorced, lots of them have had children and we have also unfortunately had two of our composers die.

I will explain the importance of this issue by telling you a couple of very personal stories involving Partners In Rhyme composers.

A Long Time PIR Composer Disappears
A few years ago I had noticed that one of our composers who had been distributing his royalty free music catalog with us since the very early days had not contacted me with new music or questions in a very long time. I had sent him a few emails to see how he was doing with no response. I finally figured he must have changed his email address and I started searching online for his name.
The first thing I found was a Myspace page full of condolence messages. I was shocked. Our composer had died a year before and we had been selling his music and making payments to his paypal account during that entire time.
It took a lot more digging, almost like digital forensic work, but I was finally able to find his wife’s email address via another Myspace page and contacted her. I wrote to her to explain that her husband had been earning, and was being paid, all this money and we had no idea that he was dead. After a few back and forth emails I finally made clear what the situation was and we started sending his payments to her Paypal account instead. I don’t think she ever understood the situation regarding the previous year’s payments though and to this day I think the composer’s original paypal account is sitting there with close to $10,000 in it, unclaimed.
She is, at least, still earning money to this day and the composer’s music is still being used in all kinds of projects.

Musicloops.com Composer Disappears
The same situation happened more recently when I couldn’t get a response to a request for a 1099 form from one of our musicloops.com composers and I ended up doing another web search only to find condolence websites instead. I was able to contact his wife but in the end we had to delete his music catalog because she simply did not want to understand or deal with what I was telling her about her husband’s earnings and that we were distributing his music.
I understood that it was a difficult time for her but I think her husband would have wanted her to have the monthly earnings and also would have wanted his music to live on and be used in projects for years to come.

Take Away Advice
This is kind of a depressing article but it is something to think about.
Let your significant other or a trusted family member know what you are doing with your music, give somebody the password to your paypal account and let them know the email addresses of the people you are dealing with in regards to your royalty free music catalog.
If you get hit by the proverbial bus you will probably no longer care what happens to your musical legacy but your loved ones probably will.

Let me know what you think about this issue, post your comments and suggestions below.

In the article ‘What Is Free Royalty Free Music’ I explained what royalty free music is and how it can be used but I think it is also important to explain what royalty free music is not. Many people have ideas about what they can do with royalty free music after they license it that are simply not true. I would like to dispel a few of those misunderstandings below.

1. Royalty Free Music is Not Free.
Just like sugar-free candy is not free and fat-free yogurt is not free, royalty-free music is not free. It is something you have to pay for but it is free from paying royalties. See below regarding the proper term “Free Royalty Free Music”.

2. Royalty Free Music is Not Something You Own After You Purchase It.
You cannot upload the music by itself and sell it to other people as if it were your own. It is only licensed to you to use in conjunction with a media based project like a video or film.

3. Royalty Free Music is Not Copyright-Free Music.
Far from it, royalty free music is copyrighted and protected by the composers who created the music. They are only allowing people to use their work by selling them a license to use the music.

4. You Cannot Sing Over Royalty Free Music and Call It Your Own
Many singers mistakenly believe they can buy royalty free music, write some lyrics, record their vocal over the music and then call the results their own song and distribute it as they wish. This is completely not true and not allowed under any royalty free music license I have ever seen.
To create a song like that you need to hire a composer to write music for you. Or learn how to play piano and write your own music.

5. You Cannot Sample Royalty Free Music
You cannot take bits and pieces of the royalty free music you license and create your own music out of it. There are sample libraries available for this purpose and sampling bits of royalty free music is just like sampling bits of music by your favorite artist, it is not allowed without proper clearance.

6. You Cannot Redistribute Royalty Free Music to Your Users
Many people mistakenly believe that when they license royalty free music that they then have the right to create a new business with the music they have licensed by allowing other people to use the music. An example would be a company with a video creation site that makes a menu of music available for their users to place on the videos they create in the web app. This type of use is not allowed and is a form of redistribution.
Another example would be a company that creates on hold music, they would not be allowed to use royalty free music to redistribute to their clients.

iMovie is one of the applications included in the iLife suite for the Macintosh. It is an easy-to-use video editing software that even beginners can use without a problem. iMovie versions 2.0.3 and earlier can be installed in Mac OS 9, while iMovie 3 and later can only run in Mac OS X. There is also iMovie HD, which was released in 2005, to be used for editing high-definition videos.

Adding Music to Your MovieWhile editing your home video in iMovie, you might also want to add music to it. Music, when done perfectly, adds more feeling and emotion to the movie. It also helps your edits to have smooth transition. There are several ways of adding music to your project in iMovie. The first one is through the use of the menu on the toolbar. Simply click on File > Import then browse through the different folders on the window that comes up to locate the desired audio file. Highlight the file and click Open to import the file.

File ImportThe file types that can be imported to iMovie are those that also run in Quicktime, such as MP3 and AIFF files. Those unsupported file types may be grayed out in the folder to indicate that it cannot be imported to iMovie.

A new track is added below the video track once the audio file is imported. The current location of the playhead is where the imported audio will begin playing. So make sure that your playhead is positioned correctly in the timeline before importing the audio file. The mode will automatically switch to “timeline viewer” mode once the track is already added since audio can only be edited in the timeline.

Two Audio TracksiMovie allows you to work with two audio tracks at the same time. That is why you will notice a space between the video track and the audio track that was just created. When another audio file is imported, it will most likely overlap the previous track. This does not edit nor cut the overlapped track, though. You can click on the track and drag it to the gray space in the middle for you to be able to edit both tracks. When both tracks are turned on, i.e. the box to the right of the timeline corresponding to the track is checked, the two tracks will play simultaneously but at different levels depending on the settings done to each of the track. You can turn off a track by unchecking the box.

iTunes and iMovieAnother quick way of adding music to your iMovie project is by clicking on the Audio button on the iMovie media menu. Once Audio is selected, a list of all the files in your iTunes library will be displayed on the right side of your iMovie window (on top of the media menu). Position the playhead where you want the music to begin. Choose your desired music then click on the Place at Playhead button to add the music to your project. If you are unsure of which to select, you can preview the song by clicking on the play symbol button just below the list.

Drag ‘n’ DropYet another quick way of adding music is just by simply dragging the audio file from the CD, folder, or your desktop and dropping it onto the timeline. This will automatically import the file and create a new track.

Plugins and iMovie ’08 and ’09Here’s the deal with iMovie plugins and the newer versions of iMovie.
iMovie ’08 is a complete rewrite of Apple’s movie editing sofware and does not support plug-ins. It is made for easy editing and uploading of videos to the web but is not meant for professional editing capabilities and effects available in earlier versions of iMovie.

For your video projects that involve more than a standard dissolve transition, iMovie 6 is still there and available for you to use. You can download and install iMovie 6 and use it in conjunction with iMovie ’08 and ’09 if you’d like. That way you can take advantage of all these free plugins for editing and then move to the later version of iMovie for upload and general editing.Download iMovieHD6.dmg to Use These PluginsThis file is 149 megs and is a full application, not an update.

This install will ask that iLife 08 be present on your hard drive. Since many of you may not have iLife 08 installed (like me) there is a simple solution;

Open a terminal and type “touch /Library/Preferences/com.apple.iLife08.plist”

Then install as usual. I just did this on an old mac laptop that had absolutely nothing on it, no version of iMovie and no iLife and it iMovie 6 installed just fine after using the solution above.

Free iMovie Plugins from Applefor older versions of iMovie only iMoviePlugin_Pack_2.1.1.smi.binThis iMovie Plugin Pack 2.1 includes the following new effects, transitions, and titles:

Allows users to add new cities to the list of over 4,000 locations provided by Apple to create powerful animated travel maps. Although most large cities and popular tourist destinations are included, most users are likely to find out at some point that their destination is not available.

CityListBuilder fixes the problem by making it very easy to add new cities by leveraging Google’s powerful geo-location web services.

This tutorial will teach you how to create a Sound On / Off button for the music loop you have just added in the first flash tutorial.This tutorial is built on top of the the tutorial ‘How To Import And Add Sound To A Movie‘ that deals with the basics of importing sounds to Flash. This means that this tutorial assumes that you have a sound loop imported into the library of your movie. With the music loop in your library we can start building a button.

Go to Insert -> New Symbol or press Ctrl + F8 (Image 1).

Ok, now the dialog box titled ‘Create New Symbol’ appears. Type in the name box ‘SoundOnOffButton’ for type select ‘Button’ and click ‘Ok’. Before clicking the Ok button, you button should look similar to image 2.

The button appears in the library and you should be now in the editing mode of the button. Take a look at the image 3 so will know what I’m talking about.

Rename the layer to ‘Speaker Graphic’. As you can suggest, the layer will display a graphic with a simple speaker. I used the line tool to draw something like this on the image 4. It’s not fancy, I know, but you get the idea.

With this button, you can go to the main timeline by clicking on the back button above the timeline of the button (Image 5).

On the main timeline add an additional layer ‘Actions’. Now you should have two layers in the main timeline. The upper one renamed ‘Actions’ and the layer below renamed to ‘Content’. Select the first frame of the layer ‘Content’ and drag the SoundOnOffButton from the library somewhere on the stage. In my sample I placed it on the upper right corner of the Stage (Image 6). When placed on the stage, in the Properties panel, give it an instance name of ‘sound_btn’. To do this, keep the button selected on the stage, open the properties panel (Window -> Properites) and type ‘sound_btn’ in the left text box where it says ‘<Instance Name>’. See image 6.

The next step you should do is to add a linkage name to your imported sound loop. To do this, open up the library, right click the sound file in select ‘Linkage…’ (Image 7).

The ‘Linkage Properties’ dialog box appears. Check the option ‘Export for ActionScript’ and in the ‘Identifier’ text box, type in ‘myTrack’. Make sure the dialog box looks similar to image 8 and then click Ok.

Now select the first frame of the layer Actions and open up the Actions layer (press F9). Type in (or paste) the following lines of code code:

This tutorial will show you how to create a pause button for the music loops you have added in the first tutorial.This tutorial is built on top of the the tutorial ‘Creating a Sound On/Off Buttons’. You should complete the tutorial successfuly. Click here to open the tutorial. When you complete it you can come back here. Open the library from this tutorial and double click the button in library. Rename the button the ‘PauseSoundButton’ (Image 1).

Right click on the button and click ‘Edit…’. Remove the speaker graphic and add a simple text like ‘Pause Sound’ (Image 2).

It’s noting spectacular as you can see, but up to you how you create your graphics. You can add what you want into the button.

As left from the previous tutorial, the button should be placed in the upper right corner. Now click on the first frame of the ‘Actions’ layer, press F9 to open up the Actions panel. Remove the code from the previous tutorial and add the following code:

Assuming you have successfully completed the previous tutorials I expect that I do not have to show you how to create buttons, import sounds, add graphics to sounds etc. In this tutorial we need to concetrate on the ActionScript that fades in/out the played sound.

Follow these steps to do this:

1. Import a sound loop to you Flash Movie2. Give it a linkage ID ‘myTrack’3. Create to buttons. One with a plus sign inside and the other one with a minus sign inside. Place the on the stage like on the image 1.

4. The plus button should have the instance name ‘fadeIn_btn’, the minus button ‘fadeOut_btn’.

The button should be placed on the layer ‘Content’. Above this layer, create a layer called ‘Actions’, select the first frame and open the Actions Panel (press F9). Paste the following code:

Adding sound loops to a Flash Movie is a simple task. The first thing you have to do is to find the appropriate loop for your Flash Movie. We have lots of free royalty free music loops on our home page at Partners In Rhyme.com that you can download and use with these tutorials. You can add sound loops for your animations such as cartoons or intros. The whole thing is very easy. If you have a Flash movie with content, like on image 1.

To add a loop to your movie, follow these steps:

1. Add an extra layer called “Sound”.2. Import a sound loop the you Flash Movie. 3. Select the first frame of the layer4. In the properties panel, in the “Sound” drop down menu, select the imported sound.

That’s all, now you can specify the number of times to loop! On image 3, you can how the image should know look like.

This tutorial will shortly explain the importance of the loadSound method. This method is used when you want to load external MP3 files. Here is the syntax: public loadSound(url:String, isStreaming:Boolean) : VoidLet’s see how it works!As I already said, this loads an MP3 file into the Sound object you created. The parametar isStreaming is interesting. You can use it to indicate whether the sound is an event or a streaming sound. Just like it is the case with every sound, event sounds must be completely loaded before they play. They are managed by the ActionScript Sound class and respond to all methods and properties of this class.Streaming sounds play while they are downloading. Playback begins when sufficient data has been received to start the decompressor. All MP3s (event or streaming) loaded with this method are saved in the browser’s file cache on the user’s system. Here is the overview of the two parameteres:url:String – The location on a server of an MP3 sound file.isStreaming:Boolean – A Boolean value that indicates whether the sound is a streaming sound (true) or an event sound (false).Let’s create an example!Open up a new Flash document. Place an input text field onto the stage (Image 1).

Give it an instance name songName_txt (Image 2).

Add a simple button besides the text field and give it the instance name startSound_btn.(Image 3)

Ok, now add an additional layer and name it „Actions“. Rename the layer with the text field at the botton to „Text Field“ (Image 4).

Make sure you have MP3 tracks in the same folder where the Flash movie resides. Select the first frame of the layer Actions and add the following ActionScript:var soundToLoad:Sound = new Sound();startSound_btn.onRelease = function () { var song = songName_txt.text; soundToLoad.loadSound(song, true);}soundToLoad.onLoad = function () { this.start(0, 1);}Test the movie. Type in the name of one of your tracks and press the start button. The mp3 file should load and play!

Welcome back to our series about Flash Audio. Now we will deal with some more complicated stuff, stereo and mono sounds. To accomplish that, I have to instroduce you to the Transform object in Flash. Sounds complicated, but it’s not that complicated. In ActionScript, you have the “Object” DataType. Like this:

//define an object in ActionScript
var myObject:Object = new Object();

But what has this to to with the sound? Here is the answer. The sound in Flash is transformed eg. divided into speakers. When the stereo sound is on (by default it is stereo), then the right speaker has the percentage of 100 and the left too. In ActionScript, it is written like this:

ll = 100
lr = 0
rr = 100
rl = 0

What the heck? It’s not that complicated. Ll stands for Left input on left speaker. Lr stands for left input on right speaker. Rr for right input on right speaker and rl for right input on left speaker. The variables can have values from 0 – 100. As you suggest, you adjust the values to create mono or stereo sound.

//sample mono on left speaker
ll = 100
lr = 100
rr = 0
rl = 0

//sample mono on right speaker
ll = 0
lr = 0
rr = 100
rl = 100

So now that you understand the show transform object you have to know how to apply this to the sound object. Assume you have a track in your Flash document library with the linkage ID set to “myTrack”. The code would look similar to this:

Every music aficionado probably knows what iTunes is. Apple Computer launched iTunes during the MacWorld Expo San Francisco in 2001. iTunes is a media player and an application used to organize your music and video files. Although it is owned by Apple Computer, it can also be installed and used in NT-based Windows platforms, i.e. Windows XP, 2000 and Server 2003. Mac OS 9 was the first Mac version it was used with but the support for this platform was discontinued after iTunes 3.

iTunes also comes standard with all Apple iPods. iTunes is the application used to organize and upload music in iPods. The application can also connect to the iTunes Music Store where users can purchase digital music and video files to be played in iPods and iTunes.

Any user can easily learn how to use iTunes. Its features and functionality are not that complex that even a beginner can easily transfer and play media files with iTunes. Here are some basic tutorials on some of the functionalities of iTunes.

How to Import Your Favorite Music from a CD

It would be great to have all your favorite songs from different CDs be consolidated in just one music library, isn’t it? This task is possible and easily done with iTunes.

Insert the CD where you want to import songs from inside the disc drive. Once you insert the CD, iTunes will automatically come up. If not, just open it from your list of programs. When iTunes automatically comes up, it will immediately show you the list of songs in the CD. Alternatively, you can choose the CD title in the Source list to see the music files in the disc.

iTunes is capable of immediately knowing the contents of your CD because it has a database of different information about each song from the Compact Disc Database (CDDB). CDDB is an online service which has all song information or tags. If your computer is connected to the internet, iTunes will automatically connect to CDDB and search the database for the CD information.

With iTunes, you can just choose the songs that you want to import and not necessarily import the whole CD. There are checkboxes beside each song title in the list. Just select those that you want to import into your computer. Once you have checked all the songs you want to import, just click on the Import button on the upper right hand corner of the window. You can see the import progress on the viewer at the upper middle portion of the iTunes window. A wave symbol will be shown beside the title of the song being imported, while a check mark is shown when the song has already been imported.

Once done, you can now eject the CD from the tray by clicking on the Eject button on the lower right hand side of the window. From the Source list, choose Library to show all the media files stored in your iTunes music library. You should now be able to see those songs that you have imported from the CD in the iTunes library.

Music files from CDs are known to be large files. However, when those songs get imported into your computer through iTunes, they are automatically converted into a much lower yet reasonable file size. iTunes has the capability of compressing the music files as they are imported. The compressed, imported files are not necessarily of low quality. You may not even be able to distinguish a compressed song from that played from a CD.

You can also choose the compression technique that iTunes uses to copy and convert the songs. Just go to Importing preferences and choose the audio format from the list in the Import Using pop-up menu. You can choose among different formats such as MP3, AAC, AIFF, and WAV. MP3 can produce high quality sound with just a small file size. AAC can be even better in giving higher quality with smaller size; this is also the file format of songs that can be purchased from iTunes Music Store. AIFF and WAV, though able to produce excellent quality music, have large file sizes.

With iTunes, you can import all those songs from all your CDs. It would give you easy access to all your songs in just one music library. After all, you can store as much music you want in iTunes; you can have thousands of songs stored here and still have room for your other programs and files.Every music aficionado probably knows what iTunes is. Apple Computer launched iTunes during the MacWorld Expo San Francisco in 2001. iTunes is a media player and an application used to organize your music and video files. Although it is owned by Apple Computer, it can also be installed and used in NT-based Windows platforms, i.e. Windows XP, 2000 and Server 2003. Mac OS 9 was the first Mac version it was used with but the support for this platform was discontinued after iTunes 3.

iTunes also comes standard with all Apple iPods. iTunes is the application used to organize and upload music in iPods. The application can also connect to the iTunes Music Store where users can purchase digital music and video files to be played in iPods and iTunes.

Any user can easily learn how to use iTunes. Its features and functionality are not that complex that even a beginner can easily transfer and play media files with iTunes. Here are some basic tutorials on some of the functionalities of iTunes.

How to Import Your Favorite Music from a CD

It would be great to have all your favorite songs from different CDs be consolidated in just one music library, isn’t it? This task is possible and easily done with iTunes.

Insert the CD where you want to import songs from inside the disc drive. Once you insert the CD, iTunes will automatically come up. If not, just open it from your list of programs. When iTunes automatically comes up, it will immediately show you the list of songs in the CD. Alternatively, you can choose the CD title in the Source list to see the music files in the disc.

iTunes is capable of immediately knowing the contents of your CD because it has a database of different information about each song from the Compact Disc Database (CDDB). CDDB is an online service which has all song information or tags. If your computer is connected to the internet, iTunes will automatically connect to CDDB and search the database for the CD information.

With iTunes, you can just choose the songs that you want to import and not necessarily import the whole CD. There are checkboxes beside each song title in the list. Just select those that you want to import into your computer. Once you have checked all the songs you want to import, just click on the Import button on the upper right hand corner of the window. You can see the import progress on the viewer at the upper middle portion of the iTunes window. A wave symbol will be shown beside the title of the song being imported, while a check mark is shown when the song has already been imported.

Once done, you can now eject the CD from the tray by clicking on the Eject button on the lower right hand side of the window. From the Source list, choose Library to show all the media files stored in your iTunes music library. You should now be able to see those songs that you have imported from the CD in the iTunes library.

Music files from CDs are known to be large files. However, when those songs get imported into your computer through iTunes, they are automatically converted into a much lower yet reasonable file size. iTunes has the capability of compressing the music files as they are imported. The compressed, imported files are not necessarily of low quality. You may not even be able to distinguish a compressed song from that played from a CD.

You can also choose the compression technique that iTunes uses to copy and convert the songs. Just go to Importing preferences and choose the audio format from the list in the Import Using pop-up menu. You can choose among different formats such as MP3, AAC, AIFF, and WAV. MP3 can produce high quality sound with just a small file size. AAC can be even better in giving higher quality with smaller size; this is also the file format of songs that can be purchased from iTunes Music Store. AIFF and WAV, though able to produce excellent quality music, have large file sizes.

With iTunes, you can import all those songs from all your CDs. It would give you easy access to all your songs in just one music library. After all, you can store as much music you want in iTunes; you can have thousands of songs stored here and still have room for your other programs and files.

continuing series of how to articles for iTunes software. This installment tells how to browse and play music.

How to Play Your Music

Once you have imported your favorite songs from the CD or have purchased them from the iTunes Music Store, you now have them in your library for you to play and listen to. With iTunes, you can just sit back, relax, and listen to your great music collection.

Once you have iTunes open, choose Library from the Source list to show all the songs in your library. Just select the song you want to listen to and click on the Play button on the upper left hand corner. If you want to adjust the volume, you can do so with the volume slider control just below the playback buttons.

With the iTunes display on the upper middle portion of the screen, you can see the title of the song currently playing, elapsed time, and a timeline. If you want to skip to a specific portion of the song, you can just click on any point on the timeline. If you want to skip to the next song, instead, you can do so by clicking on the Fast Forward button beside the Play button.

If you do not want to just listen to the song, you also have an option to “see” it. iTunes has a Music Visualizer which synchronizes with the song’s rhythm. You will surely enjoy this full-color light show while listening to your favorite music. If you want this Music Visualizer on, just go to Visualizer menu and click on Turn Visualizer On. To view your music library again, go back to the Visualizer menu and choose Turn Visualizer Off. Alternatively, you can quickly turn on and off the Music Visualizer with the Music Visualizer button on the bottom of the window just beside the Eject button.

You can also customize how the visualizer looks. You can choose a full screen size or opt for a much smaller window by resizing it. While the Music Visualizer window is playing, you can just press on the H key on your Mac keyboard to customize the window more.

For a real great listening experience, you can choose to connect a pair of high-end powered speakers to your Mac. With the use of an adapter cable, usually a mini-to-stereo RCA splitter cable, you can attach a home stereo system to your computer or iPod and enjoy to the great sound of your favorite music.

How to Browse and Search for Files in Your iTunes Library

Sometimes we feel the urge to some particular music. There are also times that we don’t know exactly what we want to listen to. Having hundreds or even thousands of music in your computer may be too overwhelming. With iTunes, browsing the music library and choosing the exact song you want to listen to is just an easy task.

If you want to browse the music library, choose Library in the Source list then click on the Browse button on the upper right hand side of the window. You will then have an Artist and Albums list. Just choose your desired artist from the Artist list and it will show the different albums of that artist that are in your music library. Choose the desired album to play and click on the Browse button again to return to your iTunes library where it shows the different songs included in the album selected.

Browsing by genre is also possible. To do so, go to the iTunes menu then select Preferences. Click on the icon labeled General and choose “Show genre when browsing,” and click OK. Once you click on the Browse button again, you will now see the list of different genre such as Pop, Rock, Country, Hip Hop, Jazz, etc, in the browsing pane to the left of the Artist list.

If you cannot see the whole album title or name of the artist from the browsing pane, you can adjust the right side of the pane. Just hover the mouse on the line separating the columns and it will change to a double-sided arrow. You can now adjust the line to the left or right to narrow or expand the viewing window, respectively.

On the other hand, if you know exactly the song you want to listen to and want to search for it, you can also do that easily with iTunes. Notice on the upper portion of the window, there is a search icon and a search box. Type the name of the song or just a part of it in the search box. Notice that with each word you type, the list populates more songs that somehow match your search criteria.

When you make a search, iTunes checks the Song Name, Artist, Composers and Albums fields. If you want an exact search, you can choose a category from where iTunes will do the search. You can do this by clicking on the search icon and select the desired category then type the search criteria in the field or search box. After making a search, you can go back to the iTunes library by clicking on the gray-and-white icon in the search field.

In the case that you upgraded iTunes from Mac OS 9 to the new iTunes 4 with Mac OS X, your music from the previous version may not be stored in the same place where the new version stores the files. It would be tedious to search for your desired song if your music are not found in a single location. To consolidate all your music files into just one folder, go to Advanced menu and select Consolidate Library.

iTunes also allows you to see how much hard disk space your music library has already consumed. When you have the Library selected from the Source list, you will see the total number of files you already have, their total running time, and the total combined file size of all the songs at the bottom portion of the iTunes window.

The third installment of a three part series of articles on how to use iTunes software. This section deals with playlists and toher programs.

How to Organize Your Music Using Playlists

Organizing your music can also be done with iTunes. You can do this by creating different playlists that would correspond to every set of songs that you want to create. Using a playlist, you can select the songs you just want to play at a given time and choose their order as well depending on your preference.

To create a playlist, go to the File menu and click on New Playlist. A new entry on your Source list will be created. This entry will be an untitled playlist. Choose the untitled playlist and rename it to whatever that would best describe the songs in it. You can give names such as workout songs, relaxing classics, my hit list, etc. The possibilities are infinite.

Once you have created and named your playlist, choose the songs you want to add to the playlist from the library and drag them to the playlist. You can add as many songs as you want. As a shortcut, you can select all the songs you want to add at once by holding down the Command key (Ctrl key in Windows PC) while choosing the different songs and dragging the entire selection to the playlist.

To view the songs that you have just added in your playlist, choose the name of the playlist from the Source list. You can also change the order of the songs by selecting the song number and drag the song to the position desired.

A single song can also be added to multiple playlists if desired. To do so, just choose the song from your music library and drag it to the different playlists you want to add it to. If, on the other hand, you choose not to hear the song anymore, just deselect the song from your music library. Deselecting it from the library will also disable it from playing when the playlists it is included are played.

If you want to make your playlists play for only a specified period of time such as 30 minutes for your daily workout or as long as the movie you made, you can do so by getting the duration information for the playlist. This information is displayed on the bottom portion of the window as well as the number of songs in the playlist and the total size of the playlist.

Deleting a playlist is just like deleting any file. You just need to select the playlist from the Source list then press the delete key. This will only remove the playlist, and the songs which are included in the deleted playlist still remain in the music library.

How to Use Your Songs with Other Applications

iTunes is a part of the iLife suite by Apple Computer which also includes iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. These applications are developed to work together. The songs you have in your iTunes music library can all be used with any of the other iLife applications as well as applications in a Windows-based computer.

You can, for example, use your favorite song compilation as soundtrack of the family movie you are doing in iMovie. You can enjoy viewing the different photos you have just taken by adding background music from your iTunes library in your photo slideshow in iPhoto.

To add background music to your iPhoto slideshow, choose your photo library from Source list in iPhoto. Click on the Slideshow button to open the Slideshow Settings window. Adjust the number of seconds the image will show onscreen depending on your preference. You will see a Music option in the window, click on the box beside to select it and choose iTunes Library from the menu. Choose the song that you want to play as the background music. Once done, click on the Play Slideshow button to playback the slideshow project.

If you want to add a song from your iTunes library to a presentation you created in Microsoft PowerPoint or Keynote, you can do so in just a few easy steps. Choose the song you want to use from your music library in iTunes. Once the song is selected, go to File menu and click on Show Song File. A representation of the music file will come up in a new Finder window. Click the song file and drag it to the Keynote or PowerPoint slide where you want to add it to.

Your favorite songs in your iTunes music library are not limited only for your listening pleasure. You can have a wide range of possible uses of those songs in different applications in your Mac or Windows-based computer.

Last month we returned from our 6 week long journey through the Hawaiian islands, as well as vacationing we were recording sounds, taking video and of course swimming and boogie boarding.

I am back in the studio now and am starting to edit the collection of nature sounds we recorded while we wandering around in Maui, Kauai, Hawaii (the big island) and Ohau. The recordings are turning out surprisingly well I think.
These will be available on www.sound-effect.com and I’ll probably make a few more relaxation CDs with some of these sounds…

Just in time for your Christmas multimedia projects we have made available for download the Bach Brandenburg Concerto 6 mvt 1, Bach Three Part Inventions Sinfonia II, III, and Bach Air on a G String, plus Vivaldi’s Winter from Four Seasons.

These classical music tracks are perfect for use in your Christmas projects and were performed by the USAFB and are therefore in the public domain and available for use in your commercial projects.
If you need higher quality classical music for your Christmas projects please check out our Royalty Free Classical Music website.

Christmas Audio Round-upIt is never too early to get started on your Christmas marketing campaigns and with that in mind we have created this year’s list of Christmas audio resources from Partners In Rhyme to will help you get your yuletide projects done quickly, legally and inexpensively during this holiday marketing rush.

This list includes all of our free resources as well so read carefully.

You get a variety of all-time classics including Away In The Manger, Little Drummer Boy, Joy To The World and many more plus a bonus track of the Wedding March. Full length tracks are provided as well as a variety of short loops edited from each of the tracks.

Boo!
It’s that time of year again for multimedia producers to start thinking about Halloween and getting together their resources for their scary projects and horrorific zombie movies. I put together a list here of all Partners In Rhyme’s paid for and free resources for spooky, scary and horror sound effects and music tracks.
Check everything out and when you get to the bottom of the list you will see this year’s Halloween sound effects gift pack for you to download and use in your commercial projects, no strings attached.

Many people mistakenly believe that the Christmas classics that they hear year after year in their shopping malls and department stores are all in the public domain and can be used freely in their videos and projects. Below is a list compile by Nathaniel Patchner of rightsworkshop.com of the 10 Christmas Songs you probably thought were in the public domain but aren’t;

1. Winter Wonderland
2. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
3. White Christmas
4. Iâ€™ll Be Home For Christmas
5. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
6. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
7. Jingle Bell Rock
8. Frosty The Snowman
9. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
10. The Little Drummer Boy

The New & Improved Royalty Free Music Store
After an investment of 6 months and $10,000 the new Partners In Rhyme Royalty Free Music Store is now live and taking orders.
We re-built the store from the bottom up with many long needed improvements and we now have complete control over adding new features. If you ever have any suggestions or issues regarding your Partners In Rhyme shopping experience you should contact us and we will work on implementing them right away.

A few of the many new features of the new Partners In Rhyme Royalty Free Music Store are:

Quick Checkout
For those of you that do not like to register and give away information just to purchase something then this option is for you. Simply choose Quick Checkout and enter your email address and everything will be sent to you without the need for a registered account.

Integrated Paypal
You no longer have to contact us directly to request a Paypal purchase, it is built right into the shopping cart.

Invoice / License Agreement
We have dramatically improved the email license agreement and email invoice that you receive from us after your purchase.

Download Info
Your download info is now emailed to you directly after making your purchase.

Increased Security
In these times of well known companies getting hacked and sensitive user information being compromised we have taken the preemptive step of making sure all of our ecommerce stores are completely secure.
We have hired the firm Security Metrics to keep a constant eye on our websites to ensure that no security issues arise.
On top of that we hired a hacker turn security consultant to attack our sites and give us a security issues report that allowed our programmers to address even the tiniest possible security issues no matter how remote they might have been.
And as always your sensitive data is never stored on any of our servers or databases on or offline.